ESL Saigon

Rise-fall tone followed by a tail

We find a similar situation in the rise-fall tone case as we have seen with the fall-rise tone. If the tonic syllable is followed by a single syllable in the tail, the “rise” part of the tone takes place on the tonic syllable (the first one) and the “fall” part on the second syllable (see the examples below).

When there are two or more syllables in the tail, the syllable that follows the tonic syllable is always higher and all other syllables are low (see the examples below).

The most interesting thing is the fact that the speaker has no way of choosing the pitch of the syllables in the tail. This is 100% determined by the choice of tone for the tonic syllable.